Germany--yet again but with Kole

After Mom and I left Brugge we went up to Delft Holland. It is a cute little town known for it's blue and white porcelain. We stayed at the Hotel Emausport. They had about 25 very steep steps going up to our room on the second floor. Thank heavens it was on level 2 and not up any further. No one could carry our luggage any further. We went to the 2 cathedrals there and ate pretty well. Our breakfast hd the most magnificent croissants ever! It rained hard while there and there isn't really a lot to see but lovely to just roam around. 

We left Delft early and headed back to Frankfurt to pick up Kole from the airport. While on the way we stopped in Monchengladbach where Rachel Doty is serving a mission. This is her with her companion at the time a Sister Olson. 

It was a bit of a creepy city really. Ghettoish as Sister Olson would say. You could almost feel the darkness while approaching the city. Mom and I were on the trai

n in a compartment by ourselves. There were many other available seats and this gentleman came and sat right next to mom. He was really interesting :-) A bit like entering the Bates motel. He loved his mother. Everything was in respect to when "Mother died".......PSYCHO. He was concerned why we were headed to Monchengladbach and not Dusseldorf with good reason we came to find out. 

We had good intentions of taking Rachel and Sister Olson out for a good meal but come to find out on Saturday the busses run different routes, they had an appointment soon and mom and I needed to get going so we wouldn't miss our train to Frankfurt. So they got French Fries and Ice Cream. A very nutritious meal. I guess we could have fed them our canned fish--we never finished. Mom got picked up again by a guy on the street. Rachel had to put on the hard core brush off and we fled. 

We left them and started on our way to Frankfurt where we stayed the night in a hotel close to the airport as we had to pick up Kole at 8:00 in a.m. It was a nice little hotel with one movie that played english films. Mom and I watched "Benjamin Buttons" pretty good. We were pretty starved for something familiar though.

Here's our great little car that should have cost a mere $250 american dollars but because we didn't do a thorough inspection the car ended up costing us much more. It didn't do too bad on the autobahn and I must say Kole did a most fantastic job of figuring out the GPS. We probably could have changed "Marta's" voice to English but we chose to go local and listened in German. We actually did quite well. We got where we needed to go every time. I think GPS's have come a long way since I got my car. Mine still steers me on crazy routes.

Because Kolette only had a 6 hour plane trip we thought we'd get started right away on our road trip on the Romantik Strasse. However we detoured through the amazing city of Heidelberg first. We first went to the tourist office then decided to take a river cruise on the Neckar river. Here's mom and Kole. Kole was beat but doesn't really look like it here. She got "trapped" sitting by a gentleman who spoke a little but nonetheless enthusiastic English. I could tell all she wanted to do was close her eyes and soak in some sun--which mom and I were glad to see as we had had our fair share of rain during our travels thus far.

This is the hillside on the Neckar. Beautiful homes. Further down the river there were a few castles and little charming towns. The funny thing is we all thought we were going on an hour and half tour--but it was really a 3 hour tour! 

We loved Heidelberg. I'm so glad we stopped. We went up to the castle which really wasn't all that but nice little walk up about 100 steps. Mom took the tram. 

The one fantastic thing about Germany is their parking! They have parking spaces for Moms, women etc (only) How clever is that? We found some great shops and Kolette bought a gorgeous coat for Lu that she can wear at her graduation from college (kidding--she can wear it 2 years from now :-) I bought a dumb dress that cost too much and I still have to fix it to wear with beehive underwear. I hate that but the brand Nao Nao is amazing! We can't get it over here in the states so I feel lucky but frustrated because I still have to alter that dumb dress. 

We stayed in a cute little hotel and they recommended this horrible place to eat. Actually mom and Kole's dinner wasn't all that bad--Pork of course, I ordered this vegetable pancake which in english is a pizza with canned tomatoes. HORRIBLE! Didn't even sleep all that well either. I even have been doing alright with my ear plugs and once and awhile when needed Tylenol p.m.'s but not that night. We couldn't find a blind to black out the room and needless to say the sun rises--early. Kole slept that night which was important as it was her first night in Germany so she needed to get on schedule. Tomorrow--Fussen.